Cover to Cover Confidence

Dr. Troy Hicks, an education professor at CMU, and Andy Schoenborn, an English teacher at Mt. Pleasant High School, have published a book called “Creating Confident Writers: For High School, College, and Life.”   

The main goal of the book was to not be your average tips and tricks book, but a book that focuses more on social and emotional goals and answering those bigger questions. The book is framed around the main ideas of inviting, encouraging, and celebrating. Hicks says they focused on these ideas because when looking at what teachers want their students to be thinking about when they are becoming more literate, they want them to be “thoughtful, engaged, and caring and have passions.”

“Creating Confident Writers” has been out since this summer and so far, has gotten a positive response from the public including a book review in the Teacher College Record. The Chippewa River Writing Project is an organization that works to help improve the education of writing and how students learn writing around the Mt. Pleasant community and in Michigan schools. Both Hicks and Schoenborn work with them a lot and the Chippewa River Project helped them with the process of creating the book.   

Hicks and Schoenborn presented on the topic of “Creating Confident Writers” at the National Council of Teachers of English in Fall 2020.  They also led a free webinar on their book through edWeb that was open to the public.

At CMU We Do Research, We Do Real World

Story by ORGS intern, Bailey Talaska

January 2021